Presently I did meet him.
"What have you there?" I asked. He was folding up a great canvas bag of curious pattern.
"It"s when you are shipped away--to Texas or somewhere. This is a little one. You"d need--" he appraised me from head to foot--"you"d need a number ten."
He desisted from detail. He shifted to the story of his life. Since he had been a child he had wished to be an undertaker.
Now I had myself once known an undertaker, and I had known his son. The son went to Munich to study for Grand Opera. I crossed on the steamer with him. He sang in the ship"s concert, "Oh, That We Two Were Maying."
It was pitched for high tenor, so he sang it an octave low, and was quite gloomy about it. In the last verse he expressed a desire to lie at rest beneath the churchyard sod. The boat was rolling and I went out to get the air. And then I did not see him for several years. We met at a funeral. He wore a long black coat and a white carnation. He smiled at me with a gentle, mournful smile and waved me to a seat. He was Tristan no longer. Valhalla no more echoed to his voice. He had succeeded to his father"s business.
Here the poet interposed. "The Countess came to see me yesterday."
"Mercy," I said, "what countess?"
"Oh, don"t you know her work? She"s a poet and she writes for the people downstairs. She"s the Countess Sillivitch."
"Sillivitch!" I answered, "of course I know her. She is the greatest poet, maybe, of all time."
"No doubt about it," said the poet excitedly, "and there"s a poem of hers in this number. She writes in italics when she wants you to yell it. And when she puts it in capitals, my G.o.d! you could hear her to the elevated. It"s ripping stuff."
"Dear me," I said, "I should like to read it. Awfully. It must be funny."
"It isn"t funny at all," the poet answered. "It isn"t meant to be funny.
Did you read her "Burning Kiss"?"
"I"m sorry," I answered.
The poet sighed. "It"s wonderfully realistic. There"s nothing old-fashioned about that poem. The Countess wears painted stockings."
"Bless me!" I cried.
"Stalks with flowers. She comes from Bulgaria, or Esthonia, or somewhere. Has a husband in a castle. Incompatible. He stifles her.
Common. In business. Beer spigots. She is artistic. Wants to soar. And tragic. You remember my study of a soul?"
"The rainy night? Yes, I remember."
"Well, she"s the one. She sat on the floor and told me her troubles."
"You don"t suppose that I could meet her, do you?" I asked.
The poet looked at me with withering scorn. "You wouldn"t like her," he said. "She"s very modern. She says very startling things. You have to be in the modern spirit to follow her. And sympathetic. She doesn"t want any marriage or government or things like that. Just truth and freedom.
It"s convention that clips our wings."
"Conventions are stupid things," I agreed.
"And the past isn"t any good, either," the poet said. "The past is a chain upon us. It keeps us off the mountains."
"Exactly," I a.s.sented.
"That"s what the Countess thinks. We must destroy the past. Everything.
Customs. Art. Government. We must be ready for the coming of the dawn."
"Naturally," I said. "Candles trimmed, and all that sort of thing. You don"t suppose that I could meet the Countess? Well, I"m sorry. What"s the bit of red paper on the wall? Is it over a dirty spot?"
"It"s to stir up my ideas. It"s gay and when I look at it I think of something."
"And then I suppose that you look out of that window, against that brick wall and those windows opposite, and write poems--a sonnet to the girl who stuck out her tongue at me."
"Oh, yes."
"Hot in summer up here?"
"Yes."
"And cold in winter?"
"Yes."
"And I suppose that you get some ideas out of that old tin bath-tub and those ash-cans."
"Well, hardly."
"And you look at the moon through that dirty skylight?"
"No! There"s nothing in that old stuff. Everybody"s fed up on the moon."
"It"s a snug place," I said. And I came away.
I circled the stairs into the denser smell which, by this time, I found rather agreeable. The embalmer"s door was open. In the gloom inside I saw the apprentice busied in some dark employment. "I got somethin" to show you," he called.
"Tomorrow," I answered.
As I was opening the street door, a woman came up the steps. She was a dark, Bulgarian sort of woman. Or Esthonian, perhaps. I held back the door to let her pa.s.s. She wore long ear-rings. Her skirt was looped high in scollops. She wore sandals--and painted stockings.
Autumn Days.
It was rather a disservice when the poet wrote that the melancholy days were come. His folly is inexplicable. If he had sung through his nose of thaw and drizzle, all of us would have pitched in to help him in his dismal chorus. But October and November are brisk and cheerful months.
In the spring, to be sure, there is a languid sadness. Its beauty is too frail. Its flowerets droop upon the plucking. Its warm nights, its breeze that blows from the fragrant hills, warn us how brief is the blossom time. In August the year slumbers. Its sleepy days nod across the heavy orchards and the yellow grain fields. Smoke looks out from chimneys, but finds no wind for comrade. For a penny it would stay at home and doze upon the hearth, to await a playmate from the north. The birds are still. Only the insects sing. A threshing-machine, far off, sinks to as drowsy a melody as theirs, like a company of gra.s.shoppers, but with longer beard and deeper voice. The streams that frolicked to nimble tunes in May now crawl from pool to pool. The very shadows linger under cover. They crouch close beneath shed and tree, and scarcely stir a finger until the fiery sun has turned its back.
September rubs its eyes. It hears autumn, as it were, pounding on its bedroom door, and turns for another wink of sleep. But October is awakened by the frost. It dresses itself in gaudy color. It flings a scarlet garment on the woods and a purple scarf across the hills. The wind, at last, like a merry piper, cries out the tune, and its brisk and sunny days come dancing from the north.
Yesterday was a holiday and I went walking in the woods. Although it is still September it grows late, and there is already a touch of October in the air. After a week of sultry weather--a tardy remnant from last month--a breeze yesterday sprang out of the northwest. Like a good housewife it swept the dusty corners of the world. It cleared our path across the heavens and raked down the hot cobwebs from the sky. Clouds had yawned in idleness. They had sat on the dull circle of the earth like fat old men with drooping chins, but yesterday they stirred themselves. The wind whipped them to their feet. It pursued them and plucked at their frightened skirts. It is thus, after the sleepy season, that the wind practices for the rough and tumble of November. It needs but to quicken the tempo into sixteenth notes, to rouse a wholesome tempest.